Such awkward coed adventures may soon exist only in the trunks of nostalgia if Google has anything to do with the modern college experience. Earlier this year they announced that they’d given a few university campuses the Street View treatment. Perhaps realizing the scale required to map out each individual university campus in the United States and Canada, though, Google’s decided to call in the experts on college campuses: the students themselves.

Through their Google+ page, Google Maps announced the inaugural Map Your University competition for all students in the U.S. and Canada. Through the use of Google’s Map Maker, Google is asking current students to create detailed maps of their campuses that will be viewable on Google Maps and Google Earth. Winners of the competition will be award fun Google-y prizes such as Android tablets, phones, GPS devices, and more.

Full details of the event can be found on the official Map Your University page. Entries are only being accepted February 13 through March 9, so attention interested students: here’s your hot plans for Spring Break 2012!

New research reveals that 41 percent of students do not feel well-informed about the range of careers open to them. Only 13 percent feel their education institutions have fully equipped them to make career decisions. CompTIA surveyed more than 1,000 students to understand what motivates them.

The vast majority of respondents showed themselves to have skills employers want. They are hard working (89 percent), quick learners (79 percent), good at solving problems (76 percent), have communication skills (71 percent) and are able to work in a team (78 percent). Furthermore, most students are ambitious with a clear idea of what they expect from their future professions. A good salary (85 percent), variety (66 percent) and ongoing development (62 percent) are the most important considerations.

Respondents in the CompTIA survey want schools and universities to do a lot more to help them understand career options:

• 55 percent want information integrated into school lessons about what careers different subjects can lead to

• 61 percent feel they need more information about careers other than those directly related to their field of study

• 51 percent want better careers advice at school or university.

This trend is particularly notable in IT and technology, which is struggling to attract the 110,400 new entrants a year it needs to keep up with the industry’s growth.

According to Kevin Streater, executive director for IT Intelligence at the Open University:

“For far too long there has been a false assumption that IT is too technical for most people to get into. The reality is that anyone who is educated, motivated and passionate about technology should consider a career in the industry. At its core, it is very much a career where you can keep learning, keep developing and keep your hands on technology. Contrary to popular opinion there are plenty of unfilled vacancies for young people, and plenty of young people with exactly the right aptitude and ambitions to fill them. The problem is largely one of making young people aware of these opportunities and how to get into them.”

The Google TV team has been working with Google’s Student Ambassador Program and University Programs to give students and faculty around the country access to Google TV. 

"This initiative began last semester when Google Student Ambassadors hosted Google TV study breaks on over thirty campuses," explains product marketing manager Miriam Schneider. "The ambassadors had students compete to win Sony Internet TVs for their friends and school. They hosted pizza breaks, tech challenges, YouTube marathons and of course, college football viewing parties. The top seven most creative study breaks won two Sony Internet TVs to give back to their college as a reward for their school spirit and enthusiasm for Google TV." 

"The momentum from the Google TV study breaks has carried over into the classroom," says Schneider. "Already, the web on TV has proven itself as a great platform for early education and reading skills with web apps like PBS Kids and Meegenius. However, professors have expressed interest in expanding these opportunities to all levels of learning."

Google says it is asking faculty how their research could generate new interest in TV engineering, make computer science tangible for students, help in the development of smart TV curricula/new education tools, contribute to in-classroom/distance learning over TV, and/or reach a wide audience.

  Google Alumni Relations Program
   Manager
  (Screenshot Credit: Google Jobs)

The company gave its plan away by advertising for an Alumni Relations Program Manager; the posting states, "The objective is to promote and enhance Google’s campus visibility in order to recruit and hire top, emerging talent."

So Google, instead of just letting extremely qualified people come running, is going to do its part to seek them out, as well.  This seems fair.  Yet what originally caught our attention was a report indicating that a sort of network between ex-Googlers was coming into being.

Confusion aside, David Dalka still gets credit for raising the issue.  Many of Google’s employees are pretty well off, and given their previously mentioned top-tier abilities, it wouldn’t be surprising if a lot of them tried to stay in touch.  Goodness knows what they’d be able to fund or create.

We’ll leave this idea alone for the time being, though.  And we’ll suggest that everyone who meets Google’s requirements for the open position (five to eight years of HR experience, for starters) get their resume ready.

“Google Courting More Students With Email”

Yes, everybody knows GMail rocks. Well, not everybody, the email service’s numbers, when compared to Yahoo and Hotmail, are abysmal.

Ears are pricking up across British and Irish campuses, the BBC reports, Trinity College Dublin hands over the email reigns to Google. The Mountain View, Calf.-based search company says it is seeking a lifelong relationship with students.

Trinity College Dublin’s move follows a handful of others, including Michigan and Arizona in the States, and Egypt, Kenya, and Rwanda.

Google likes academics, no doubt, because this where they get their best recruits, and cozying up to colleges also gets the company that much closer to its ultimate goal: indexing the world’s information. Google at the door of the university library is a dog that smells your steak dinner.

Hence all the scanning that is ensues over the next decade for the Google Books project.

And lets not forget all the pizza.

At this point, when Google is already so dominant in the market, we wonder if their recruiting efforts, which have successfully drained the talent pool from which its competitors dredge, are just to spite Microsoft and Yahoo.

We also wonder, if Google loves academia so much, why hasn’t the company made a bid for Facebook? The company missed the boat on MySpace, and Orkut is as flat as flat can be. With the collegiate network just sitting there pondering an IPO, you might do well to predict Google is thinking about swallowing it up. 

The Consumerist highlights Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who’s taken a hard-line stance against peer-to-peer file sharing, especially in regard to federally funded universities. It just so happens, Sony, Fox, Time Warner, Universal Music, Viacom, and Disney are major campaign contributors.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Except that Feeney and others are leaning on universities to get better at cracking down on file-sharing on their networks. Otherwise, risk losing funding. He makes the argument that it doesn’t make sense for a Congress that is tough on intellectual property rights to be soft on schools it helps support that violate those rights.

Sigh. Sounds like something straight out of a record company list of talking points, doesn’t it?

Just change that around a bit and you can make a case that university cafeterias shouldn’t have kitchen knives because somebody might use one to stab a coworker. Just because students are using file-sharing systems on university networks, it doesn’t mean they’re doing something illegal, or that the university is causing and/or promoting it.

The Consumerist quotes Greg Jackson of the University of Chicago, who wins the quip of the week:

So long as the right thing remains more daunting, awkward and unsatisfying than the wrong thing, too many people will do the wrong thing.

Remind me to get over to Chicago so I can try and snatch the pebble from Jackson’s hand.

People, at least a fair percentage a fair percentage of the time, do something sketchy, especially at universities, where binge-drinking, promiscuity, and all-around hedonism seem the rule and not the exception.

But do we penalize the educational institution for what the kids will do anyway?

It’s nice to see Feeney is concentrating on redirecting money away from where it’s wasted on forging young minds, and putting it to use on more fruitful pursuits – say, in Baghdad. 

It’s hard for me, as a writer, to object to the ban.  We writers take a dim view of plagiarism; as Aaron Sorkin expressed through an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, “Accusing a writer of plagiarism – it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not . . .  You might as well accuse him of being a sex offender.”  (See – note the quotation marks, attribution, and link – we try to avoid any semblance of that offense.)

Yet the ban comes because, according to the BBC, “There have been complaints from universities about students being sold customised essays on the internet.”  In other words, some students “write” essays for school by providing a company with their credit card information, as opposed to typing out thirty pages.

The president of Universities UK, Professor Drummond Bone, was pleased with Google’s step to put an end to this practice.  “We welcome this move,” he said in a statement.  “Essay writing sites claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers – but do not then submit these as their own work.  We all know this claim is absurd.”

By the way – as I learned of this development, it seemed that only British sources were covering it, and I almost concluded that the advertising ban would only apply in the UK.  But it should, in fact, take place “across Google’s global network.”

Especially interested persons can keep an eye on Google’s Content Policy page, where “essay services” should soon join “copyrighted works” and “fake documents” on the list of banned items and services.

A library spokesman said Google would scan many books in German, but some may include Italian, French, Spanish, Latin and English.  All included books have the copyright expired.  German law currently protects copyrighted books for 70 years after the author’s death.  Google Germany spokesman Stefan Keuchel expects consumers to find downloaded books online in the future.
 
"And it’s pleasing not just for us, but also for Google users, particularly in the German-speaking world, because the deal means that we’ll be able to significantly raise the number of German books in the Google Book Search."

Keuchel considers this a significant step for Google.  Other library participants consist of the Complutense University of Madrid, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, The National Library of Catalonia, several U.S. universities and the New York Public Library. 

Google Spokeswoman Jin Cui said Google has worked with around 20 publishing houses for the Chinese version of its book search service.  Users can find this on the Internet at books.google.cn.     

Microsoft has critiqued the Google Book Search.  Various authors and publishers sued Google in 2005 to block scanning copyrighted books for fear of consumers no longer purchasing the printed version.  Google disputes by saying they create the “electronic equivalent of a library card catalog for copyrighted works” and plans to issue full texts of out-of-copyright books in the public.

Are you interested in a certificate program for work related study? If you are returning to school for work, you may want to get feedback from your employer for this decision. List your long and short term career goals to help you decide which degree will help you reach your goals best. Once you have decided on a major, you can start to research different schools.

Find out the requirements for admission into the program. Each university has its own set of regulations. All schools will want to see your transcripts from high school or college. Some will ask for test scores as well. Make sure you can meet the minimum requirements for admission before you apply. Gathering the necessary documentation before beginning the application process will save time later.

Distance education programs have different on campus requirements. Some require that you come to campus a few times each semester, while others allow you to complete the entire program at home. Programs offered completely online are more difficult to find, depending on the degree you are seeking. Make sure you can commit to the schedule required by the university. A program that requires you to travel to campus one or more times should be within driving distance of your home.

Find out if the school you will be attending is regionally accredited. Accreditation only matters when you need financial aid or plan to transfer the credits you receive to another university. Some accept credits from schools that are regionally accredited, but others do not. Check with the college you plan on attending later to make sure the credits will transfer. If you are getting your complete degree from the same school, accreditation may not be important.

Another time accreditation may matter is if you are completing a degree that will require a state license. Degrees in nursing, social work and education require licensing. Check with your state to make sure they will accept your degree for licensing. Some states won’t accept degrees from schools not recognized by the US Department of Education. Check with your school, state or Department of education to find out if the college is recognized.

If you have credits you want to transfer from another school, make sure the online university you are considering will accept your credits. Have your official transcripts sent to the school for an admissions counselor to review. Ask about any restrictions the school has for transferring credits. Most colleges won’t accept more than fifty percent of the degree requirements in transfer credits. Some have a limit on the time you can transfer credits, usually ten years.

Ask if the university offers credit for job or life experience. If you have extensive experience in the business world, some schools will give you some college credits for this. You may be required to show documentation of your experience or be given an exam. The requirements and number of credits offered varies by school, so be sure to ask. These credits can shorten the amount of time you need to spend in school and can help get your degree faster.

Katie Robbins is the owner of http://www.degreeclick.com/ , a
web resource where she regularly publishes informative articles
about online education. Some of the topics she covers include
http://www.degreeclick.com/online-education-master-degree.html
and http://www.degreeclick.com/online-health-care-degree.html